In the June Bulletin, Felipe Fernández-Armesto argues in his commentary “Teaching vs. Instruction” that the educational enterprise should focus less on instruction and more on teaching. In sum, his essay questions the use of the term “instructor” or “instruction” in the context of university education. He makes the case that instruction stands for obedience, prescription, regimentation and believing in the authority of the instructor whereas teaching stands for critical, reflective, subversive liberation.

I would argue that this argument poses an unproductive dichotomy and that the focus of the discussion should rather be on the notion of learning.

Students have reportedly a wide variety of difficulties with different subject areas and carry their own individual differences, including varied learning styles and ways of making sense out of information, into the classrooms. The focus of the educational enterprise should be oriented to students’ difficulties and best and proven practices to remedy and support students. If that means at times that some students need a lot of instruction, then we should not underestimate and devalue this.

Teaching of students actually benefits from the instruction of students. Take for example, early literacy skills: If students cannot read and express their ideas, there is no point in teaching them critical thinking. If their underdeveloped language system is not allowing them to comprehend simple or medium complex language, how are they expected to contribute to a meaningful, higher level discussion?

Another example drawing on difficulties the larger population (young and old) generally faces: One of the most reported difficulties human beings have with complex issues is interpreting and understanding graphs or behavior over time changes with multiple variables. If students cannot read and interpret graphs, how can there be a critical discussion of the issues presented in the graph, or a critical analysis of the way the data were collected and the results represented? Causal reasoning, visual representation and dealing with a n-dimensional space of variables are cognitive and socio-cognitive skills, and have to be trained as such.

Both these examples — and there are many more — contain necessary precursors for students being “teachable” and are best learned by instructional means and not by teaching means.

The second argument Fernández-Armesto makes is that the proponents of an instruction model of education were the driving force behind the “coverage of content” standpoint in the “curriculum wars” in the United States in the mid-1990s, which were particularly disturbing in the field of history. He fails to mention that a large portion of the teaching faction wanted to ensure content was covered, whereas the fields of instructional design and science of learning argued for general and domain-specific skills and critical thinking to drive the choice of curriculum.

I am not arguing against teaching in university education, but rather the acknowledgment of its limitations and its place next to other means that are similarly important. The science of learning movement in the last 20 years acknowledges that skills and critical thinking decontextualized from authentic situations will not be as effectively learned as when connected to problems that captivate our empathy and emotions in addressing larger issues of communities and society.

Johannes Strobel is an assistant professor of educational technology and a member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University in Montreal.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily CAUT.